why no Tactica for NCA?

Videos like that can be thought provoking... But don't take commentary from someone who doesn't actively play the sectorial.

I like the time and effort that vaul puts into his videos, but he's also not an ITS player. If you're going to be playing ITS missions, don't take input from someone playing a version of the game that's different from what you plan to play.

 

Not that I mind their stats as is, but for me I find the Swiss and Aquila are better for their extra points. Which granted you get three orders instead of two, but you lose some of the efficiency of running something that can brute force Camo markers/ODD quite easily in the case of Aquila. In the case of Swiss, he is good for just taking out things that have no MSV or so.

Guess that is also a good choice for list building, but Orc for me still does not have any special skills or equipment that makes it attractive for me to take. But by themselves, I personally prefer Aquila but that is because I think MSV 3 is still alright for what it does (though I think the unit is still flawed with no Access to an HMG Lieutenant option and MSV3 being somewhat situational since PanO has no reliable access to smoke).

But with the Aquila he has the same role as Hsien for Yu Jing/ISS so having a Specialist profile on him kind of makes little sense. Aquila is meant to be more of an attack piece than generalist. And for Swiss, I'd consider that a benefit since he becomes quite durable to Killer Hackers whole having some flexibility (and BTS 6 still is pretty good).

Which I guess it is a fair point. Seems are things are based more on differences in listbuilding mindset (which I can get behind and have nothing against it. I am just saying for 120+ points of a fully kitted out Haris I think there are better options, and by itself I am fine paying a little extra for some options on other units. But I can see were you are coming from and I can respect that.

 

I ignore anyone or any video that tries to explain how factions need to be played etc. Those are just someone else's opinions and ultimately should matter less than nothing to a player.

This game has always been at it's core very wax-on/wax-off.

Kinda meh about people trying to take it in a direction other than that.

 

Personally, I do find it helpful in order to get a gist of what is considered good or bad. But do not base how I build my list solely on a person's opinions, and do attempt to try and play things, even at least one.

But yeah, I do feel there are multiple ways to play a faction/sectorial, even if they do have a certain playstyle to them.

 

Interesting. Personally I'd sail the other way.

"Everything is viable" - In short it's not, a lot of things are bad in comparison and that is as bad as it gets in Infinity.

"It's not your list it's you" - plain wrong or a terrible oversimplification at best.
30 Fusilier Combis is a crappy list. If there is one bad list that is enough evidence bad lists exist. Bad is just an amalgation of several instances of suboptimal in this case. Orders, Order Efficiency, Specialists, Mission requirements... you can screw up a lot when building a list.

Failure to analyze when the dice gave you a rain check or when your opponent didn't put up much of a challenge leads to bad habits and people talking fondly of stuff like the Orc Haris.
Bad habits have a natural way of embedding themselves deeper and to keep affirming themselves. When I really want to bash on something a lot of people seem to like, I try to make it work for me, find the good points and give it a swing. The result often looks like "I've fielded DeFeresen 3 games in a row, all of them major victories and the dice made sure he performed well in all of them. However looking at the odds in the situtations he was in, it turns out he is an expensive liability and should be avoided outside of certain Missions like HC... bla bla yadda yadda".

Generic advice for anyone interested:
If you're in it for beer and pretzels do not let it bother you if stuff is bad or not. Write great or terrible lists and have fun, kudos to you my friends.
If you're in it to win it figure out who should not giving advice on a matter he is not invested in.
Everyone always has to say something and not all opinions are inheritly useful. The louder and more frequent yelling doesn't have to be the opinion that makes sense. I've most certainly "contributed" some utter garbage at times, or realized my mistake and did a 180 on certain topics (Hi Techbee, thanks for the Bandaid CB - I like it so far, can I have more? PanO for Bandaid Faction 2020!).

Not gonna sit here and defend the youtube vid obviously. I disagree with enough of it's content I'm itching to write my own guide. But it gives an honest persepective for once. Something that is frankly missing in a lot of the pinned guides and tacticas littering the forum hardly deserving the title. They're fine glossaries but fail to pit things against each other or to point out difficulties.

If this were 40k (fortunately it isn't), you'd rip people trying to sell you on low tier choices a new one. And while I already regret using the analogy (Infinity is simply far more complex and nuanced) the same principle still stands true albeit to a lesser extent.

 

Crappy at what exactly? 30 orders is pretty nice, and fusies have decent BS12. With that many bodies and shots it would be interesting to see how well it did in a kill 'em all mission. It's going to struggle against TO and Camo, but with that many bodies, and order trying to discover and shooting until it drops is viable. It's going to be decent in defence, since you should be able to setup multiple AROs fairly easily.

Obviously the lack of specialists is limiting, so nothing that requires button pushing.

 

There's just one thing I'd like to clear up about Vaul.

He's 100% an ITS player.

His opinions are entirely based around tournament ITS competitiveness, and while he has "opinions" on the quality of the ITS missions they are what he is playing 90%+ of the time (as you'll see if you watch his after-match report videos).

We swapped armies last year, he took and played my NCA and I took and played his ISS. His review of NCA was written immediately after that experience (which included tournament play). Let's just say that it only confirmed the opinions that each of us held about both sectorials.

 

Are you earnestly asking why 30 Fusiliers is a bad list?
You can't hit TO in Cover beyond 16". Period. There are exactly zero Specialists to do Classifieds or any sort of button pushing. That's not simply a matter of " oh sure it'll be tough, but with 30 Orders you can manage somehow". That's simply statistically impossibie, so no you can't.

This is about as good an example as they come for why opinions aren't necessarily useful.
I'm not berating you for questioning the statement, but if you want to question something as clear cut as this, you really should prepare a bit better before joining in.

 

It's great to see people creating content including reviews. I don't think a couple of games is nearly enough to make an informed opinion on an army though. I'm at about game 30 of bakunin and I'm only just know starting to feel comfortable.

 

You took "we only played a couple of games" out of that?

Ok.

That... is not what I said.

 

VaulSC has his opinions based on his experience and style of play, there is no need to trash him or say that there is no value in other players reviews.
He didn´t choose the faction, it was an experiment, he played NCA with his style and got his opinions on how that worked, probably very diferent when you choose your own stuff because it suits you.
Personally i disagree with lots of things in the video, but found it really good, the analysis is really good even if i dont share the conclusions and gives me an understanding of how other people see our units, and that is also very valuable.

It´s good material, but like everything here its just a players opinion, its not for imitate but to learn.

 

No, I'm asking why you think it's a crappy list, and under what circumstances, because in not all cases is 30 Fusiliers a bad list.

Yeah, I mentioned that, you seem to have missed it.

However, there are a number of ITS missions that do not require Classifieds, have Classifieds that can be used as Intel Cards, or otherwise ignored. You can always ignore one classified by doing Secure the HVT. So outside of Highly Classified, you're missing 1 objective point, max, usually less. Also most of the direct action missions also do not require you to push buttons. It's very possible to make a list with no specialists. In fact, Firefight encourages it.

Since you know in advance that missions you're going to play, you can plan accordingly.

As for TO, go around, go under, and kill the rest of the order pool, play the mission. There are a number of sectorials in this game with no access to visors. I also play Ariadna, so not having a visor to make TO easy is pretty common, and usually with much crappier BS stats. Further TO is usually 1-2 models in a list. PanO comes the closest to a TO skew faction, where you could get the numbers up to 5-6 if you really work at it. That leaves the rest of the list to get shot.

Even if there are no other options, you can afford to lose bodies against a TO model. They're generally 20 or more points, leaving you with at least one fusie that can be thrown away, probably 2-3 and still come out ahead. You could work around it by using combined orders to move a group of 4 fusies past the suppression.

Finally, please discuss the ideas, and refrain from attacking me personally. I asked a reasonable question, about an unsupported assertion, and got a unwarrantedly unpleasant response. It's been my experience the people who have to resort to attacking the other person are doing so because they little to justify their assertions.

 

Let's reign things in a bit. I think there's good content in this conversation, but we're talking at cross purposes.

@Teslarod
I'll disagree that there are "it's bad, stay away from it" choices. I think every unit needs to be given some context on when it's useful, and when it's not.

Swiss Guard - Great unit, I don't think anyone would disagree.
Swiss Guard in a list with only 5 Orders, consisting of 2 Swiss and 3 Aquila. Pretty bad.
Looping back to the Acon "unit ranking" discussion, I'm happy to add context but I'm less thrilled about saying "this is bad, don't use." Because then you end up dismissing things that others players are finding value in.

@AdmiralJCJF
If I misspoke about vaul, then that's my bad. I wanted more context on his experience and setting as a player, and I glanced at the ITS ranking page to gauge how many events he's played this season, how big they were, etc. because that helps give context to his opinions.

When no results came up at all, it made me wonder what he's factually basing his opinions on.

It's the equivalent to someone showing up to a job interview with no resume and no references. They may be very sharp, their observations very astute, but you have no context for what's forming their opinions. The guy who writes a major in-depth tactica after 100 games vs his brother is going to have a different opinion than the guy who won Interplanetario.

That's one reason why I don't like dealing in "this unit is good, this unit is bad." I'll gladly state "this unit is awesome for me, I've made it work, this is where it excels." But for units or profiles I don't like, I'm happier saying "hey this is why I don't like this thing, here's why, but let's talk about what roles it can serve."

 

Oh boy. Mate I've deliberately chosen the example as the proof of existence for a generally bad list. Bad at every aspect that matters. Bad at any mission. All of them, no exception - Direct Action or not.

So TL:DR you'll maintain there is an ITS Secanrio where Fusilier Spam is competetive or at least useable, is that correct?

I have no reason to attack you personally, but it kind of irks me you chose to stand up for an example that, again, was deliberately chosen to be undeniably bad. Onesided, unable to do tasks reseverd for Specialists, unable to face common threats in Firefights... yet you found it necessary to do just that.
So here we are and I ask you to defend your opinion, because my initial statement is a 30 Fusilier list is proof bad lists exist and my entire point builds on that initial statement being true.
So excuse me but could you either make some valid points or stop wasting my time for the heck of it?

I dare you to pick an ITS Mission of your choice and win a single game with 30 Fusiliers (mind you 30 basic Combi Fusiliers = 300 points, including 1 Lt so it is ITS legal) - only condition your opponent can't know what you're bringing and has to be at least somewhat decent.
Take some pics or make it a batrep.
To have a convincing proof of concept you'll need to replicate that result as least once.
I'll gladly admit I was wrong if you can win two out of ten games like this. In case you manage to do that we can start talking about how two out of ten appears to you as something other than bad.

Your example with the 5 guard list makes me think we use different names for the same thing. That it's possible to build a terrible list is a seperate issue from labeling certain troops as bad or suboptimal.
Also this being Infinity a terrible troop or setup would still only be labeled as "this is bad, don't use unless you have a very good reason" i.e. for Bolts or the Blackfriar MSR.
Any ranking always relies on the scale it's based upon. Using numbers only matters in relation to the scale. I completely agree that a straight power ranking sorting things into first till last place is pretty useless.
Viability however is easy to understand, to work out and to communicate.
The more self contained a troop functions as a useful module for any list the better it could be for example. This only leaves very few things with a maximum rating (some examples would be Mutts, Posthumans or Yojimbo). The only thing a 5/10 AD troop as the only AD choice would mean that the Faction has a weakness in that part of the spectrum. But still has access to an AD troop which is it's own self sufficient quality.
The Orc Haris simply would receive a terrible rating on all counts except shooting, where they get a pass. They're restricted in their options to begin with and still have to choose in between the Deflector MR and the Hacker anyway. As a result they eat a huge chunk of your points and require a lot of additional support to function properly, all that while not providing any outstanding features you couldn't replicate with more diverse and cheaper options.

Yuan Yuans for instance are great AD troops, but terrible AD gunners. They'll probably end up with a way better rating than Crusaders, yet the Crusader has nothing to fear from them as they don't actually compete with each other, even if SOF enables them for the same list.

 

Yeah we swapped armies last year upon rereading it could have been any number, i read it as you swapped for an event.

 

Vaul is one of the most visible players in the entire international community.

You can easily see how he plays, and the kind of opposition he faces, in his videos.

While we disagree about a few things, his overall ratings of factions and (largely, in any case) the units in them is NOT one of those.

 

Aww I do love bolts, granted my meta is saturated with Ariadna and their schock ammo that elevates bioimmunity a lot, but I have also appreciated a lot their veteran skill and the orders they keep in LOL (yes, I do tend to get my LTS killed), I have to admit thought I mainly play them in 5 link with spitfire and the LSG/ BS in close range are lethal, want to try them as a static fire team sometime.

 

So you're going to ignore my previous remarks, make condensing comments in return, and then require me to play 10 games with the same list? Since I play about once a week, you're asking for 3 months of game time. Even if I had that amount of time to waste, which I don't, you're already shown what will happen: you'd find another excuse to ignore anything I did. Further, you made the initial claim, the burden of proof rests with you. At this point though it's become clear you have nothing to back up your claims but more rhetorical tricks.

Pass.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't expect VaulSC to like NCA. Very much not his style. He definitely has a clear idea of whats optimal and would prefer not to play with anything thats not optimal. The only problem with that is Infinity is a game where its not necessary to take whats optimal to win.

I like watching VaulSC videos because he has a kind eye for whats optimal. But I don't exactly share his playstyle tastes.